The Yale School of Nursing was founded in 1923 with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. It celebrated its 90th anniversary in 2013.

The Yale School of Nursing was the first School of Nursing to adopt the strong professional standards from the Goldmark Report of 1923 which it had sponsored with the Rockefeller Foundation to determine the best form of nurse training in 1918. [2] It had its own Dean, faculty, budget and required a standardized degree. Annie Warburton Goodrich was appointed the first Dean of YSN and was the first woman Dean at Yale University.

In 1934, bachelor's degrees were required for admission and Yale Corporation authorized the Master of Nursing degree. This program, allowing students with no prior background in nursing graduate entry, would continue until 1956 when the Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) program began. The MSN required students to have a prior background in nursing in order to gain entry into the program. The Nurse Practitioner track within the MSN degree was established in 1971 with the offering of the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner specialty. This was expanded in 1972, when the Family Nurse Practitioner specialty began. By 1975 YSN offered 10 specialty programs and tracks, and was at the vanguard of the education of nurse practitioners at the graduate level along with clinical nurse specialists and nurse-midwives. In 1974, YSN reopened admission for students with no prior background in nursing through its Three-Year Program for Non-Nurse College Graduates (later called the GEPN program).[3]